The Sun. — London, England, 1864-09-15 00:00:00

BRITISH ASSOCIATION, BATH, Wednesday. The. British Association for the Advancement of Science opened its learned congress in this locality of hot springs and dyspeptic invalids to-day. The fixture was well made, for, independent of the beauty of the city itself, is not Bath within less than half an hour's ride of the busy port of Bristol ? And although the proceedings of the savans of the "British Association are chiefly confined to indoor disquisitions, the arctreologically disposed will find in Old Sarum, Stonehenge, and many ancient re mains in the neighbourhood, abundant materials for investigation and research. And whether from this or the other attractions held out to visitors— whether the expected presence of Bishop Colenso, the address of Dr. Livingstone on his African dis. coveries, or the hospitalities offered by the local authorities—certain it is that the gathering pro. miser to be an unusually large one, and among the distinguished individuals who have either already arrived or have signified their intention to be pre sent are the following :—Earl Nelson, the Earl of Cork, Earl of Enniskillen, Bishop Colenso, the Bishop of Bath and Wells, the Bishop of Oxford, Lady Franklin, Sir Roderick Murchison, Sir W. G. Armstrong, Sir J. Bowring, Sir W. Jardine, Sir B. Brodie, Sir E. Belcher, Sir W. Jones, Sir W. Lo gan (director of the Geological Survey of Canada), Sir A. Elton, Sir W. Trevelyan, Sir Alex. 3lilne, K.C.8., Major-General Sir A. S. Waugh, Sir R. H. Schomlocrg, Hon. A. Vernon Harcourt, the Dean of Hereford, the Dean of Cork, the Ven, Archdea con Brown, the Rev. Canon Moseley, Hon. and Rev. S. Best, Rev. W. Symonds, F.Q.S., R ev . J . Yates, 1%11.5., Mr Tite, M.P,, Mr Bazley, M.P., Commander Pym, Major. General Youngbusband, Lieut.-Col. Hogg, Col. Kennedy, Captain Maury, C.S.N., Professors Willis, Voelcker, Bazley, Rol leston, Roscoe, Rogers (Cambridge, Mass.), Wil liamson, Balfour, Babbiegton, Bell (Canada), Ansted, Abel (Royal Arsenal, Woolwich), Hark ness, T. R. Jones, Danbeny, Liveing, H. J. Smith, Stevelly, Williamson, Van Benenden (Ostend), Von Seebach, Phillips ; Drs. Living. stone, VV. Farr, J. E. Gray (British Museum), Hooker (Kew Gardens), Van DJeaberg (Rotterdam), T. Wright, Gladstone, Britten, Thnrnham, Boyd, Herapath, Scott Russell, 117 hitworth (the artillerist), E. J. Lowe (the astronomer), T. Buckland, Lankee ter, Etheiridge (Geological Museum), M. Hippius (Russia), M. Meyer (Berne), &o. Seven sections will sit daily during the congress, beginning to. morrow. Notwithstanding the heavy rain which deluged the streets of Bath during nearly the whole of the day, the members continued to pour in up to the evening, and the railway station was a scene of great confusion. There was very little to see or hear until the evening meeting in the theatre. Sections will sit daily up to Wednesday next, and among the other arrangements for the week are—To-morrow evening, a conversazione in the assembly-rooms; Friday evening, a lecture by Professor Roscoe on " The Chemical Action of Light ;" Saturday, an ex cursion to Frome, Holwel!, and the Vallis, and banquet by the Mayor of Bath ; Monday evening, Dr Livingstone's address concerning his explora tions in Africa during, the last six years ; Tuesday, microscopical soiree in the Assembly ROOMS ; Wed nesday, concluding general meeting in the Assembly Rooms, and evening banquet in the Guildhall, given by Mr Tite, M.P. As supplementary to the week's doings, there are also two excursiona arranged for Thursday, the 22d, viz., to Bristol and Clifton (where the Mayor of Bristol entertains the visitors), and to Salisbury, Old Sarum, and Stonehenge. Among the objects of interest in Bath itself may be enumerated the Abbey Church, the Museum of the Literary and Scientific Institution, Roman remains and tesselated pavement in situ, a private geological collection (made by the late Joseph Charming Pearce, Rq , F.G.S.) at the residence of Mr Bush, in the Circus ; a valuable cohection of Saxon coins, the property of Cipt. Murchison ; the Baths and Pump-room, Guildhall, &J. The Lusinees on the opening day of the congress, up to the delivery of the inaugural address by the President in the evening, has been chid:ly of st, formal character. Such was the character of the meeting of the General Committee in the Guildhall this afternoon, the object of their assembling being to complete the arrangements for the week already organised by the working Well The leading attrac tion to-day, as already mentioned, has been the gene ral meeting in the theatre this evening, At this meeting the chair having been formally resigned by Sir W. Armstrong, it was taken by Sir Charles Lyell, who proceeded at once to deliver the follow ing inaugural addrue : Gentlemen of the British Association—The place where we have been invited this year to hold our thirty-fourth meeting is one of no ordinary interest to the cultivators of physical science. What renders Bath a peculiar point of attraction to the-student of natural phenomena is its thermal and mineral waters, to the sanitary powers of • which the city has owed its origin and celebrity. The great volume and high temperature of these waters render them not only uniqiie in our island, but perhaps without a parallel in the rest of Europe, when we duly take into account their distance from the nearest region of violent earthquakes or of active or extinct volcanoes. The spot where they issue, as we learn from the researches of the historian and antiquary, was lonely and desert when the Romans first landed in this island, but in a few years it was converted into one of the chief cities of the newly conquered province. On the site of the hot springs was a large morass, from which clouds of white vapour rose into the air; and there first was the spacious bathroom built in a highly ornamental style of architecture, and decorated with columns, pilasters, and teseelated pavements. By its side was erected a splendid chapel, dedicated to Minerva, of which some statues and altars with their inscriptions and ornate pillars are still to be seen in the museum of this place. To these edifices the quarte►s of the garrison, end in the course of time, the dwellings of new settlers were added ; and they were all encircled by a massive wall, the solid foundations of which still remain. A dense mass of soil and rubbish, from ten to twenty feet thick, now separates the level on which the present city stands from the level of the ancient Aqua Solis of the Romans. Digging through this mass of heterogeneous materials, coins and coffins of the Saxon period have been found ; and lower down, beginning at the depth of from 12 to 15 feet from the surface, coins have been disinterred of Imperial Rome, bearing dates from the reign of Claudius to that of Maximus in the fifth century. Beneath the whole are occasionally seen tessellated pavements still retaining their bright colours, one of which, on the site of the Mineral Water Hospi tal, is still carefully preserved, affording us an op portunity of gauging the difference of level of ancient and modern Bath. Oa the slopes and sum. mitt; of the picturesque hills in the neighbourhood rose many a Roman villa, to trace the boundaries of which, and to bring to light the treasures of art concealed in them are tasks which have of late years amply rewarded the researches of Mr Scarth and other learned antiquaries. No wonder that on this favoured spot we should meet with so many memo rials of former greatness, when we reflect on the 'length of time during which the imperial troops and rich colonists of a highly civilised people so journed here, having held undisturbed possession of the country for as many years as have elapsed from the first discovery of America to our own times. One of our former presidents, De Diubeny, has remarked that nearly ail the most celebrated hot springs of Europe, such as those of Aix-la- Chapelle, Beden_Beden, Naples, Aavergne, and the Pyrenees, have not declined in temperature since the days of the Romans; for many of them still re tain as great a heat as is tolerable to the human body, and rt., when employed by the ancients, they do not seem to have required to be first cooled down by artificial means. This uniformity of tem perature, maintained in some places for more than 2,000 years, together with the constancy in the volume of the water, which never varies with the Vason s, as in ordinary B "e'rlor —the identity also of the mineral ingredient which, century after cen tury, are held by each spring in solution—are striking facts, and they tempt us irresistibly to speculate on the deep subterranean so urces b oth of the herd and mineral matter. How long has this uniformity pr availed ? Are the springs really ancient in reference to the earth's history, or, like the course of the present rivers and the ace tual shape of our hills and valleys, are they only of high antiquity when contrasted wil h the brief space of human annals ? May they not be like Vesuvius and Etna, which, although they have been adding to their flanks in the course of the las' 2,000 years many a stream of lava and shower of ashes, were still mountains very much the same as they now are in height and dimensions from the earliest times to which we can trace back their existence ? Yet although their foundations are tens of thou sands of years old, they were laid at an era when the Mediterranean was already inhabited by the same species of marine shells as those with which it is now peopled; so that these volcanoes must be regarded as things of yesterday in the geological calendar. It has been ascertained that the hot springs of the Pyrenees, the Alps, and many other regions, are situated in lines along which the rocks have been rent, and usually where they have been displaced or '• faulted." Similar dislocations in the solid crust of the earth are generally supposed to have determined the spots where active and extinct volcanoes have burst forth, for several of these often affect a linear arrangement, their position seeming to have been determined by great lines of fissure. Another connecting link between the volcano and the hot spring is recognisable in the great abun dance of hot springs in regions where volcanic eruptions still occur, It is also in the same districts that the waters occasionally attain the boiling tem perature, while some of the associated atufas emit steam considerably above boiling point. But in proportion as we recede from the great centres of igneous activity we find the thermal waters de creasing in frequency and in their average heat, while at the same time they are most conspicuous in those territories where, as in Central France or the Eifel in Germany, there are cones and craters still so perfect in their form, and streams of lava bearing such a relation to the depth and shape of existing valleys, as to indicate that the internal fires have become dormant in comparatively recent times. If there be exceptions to this rule, it is where hot springs are met with in the Alps and Py renees that have been violently convulsed by earth quakes. The thermal waterslof Bath are fir from being conspicuous among European hot springs, for the quantity of mineral matter contained in them in proportion to the water which acts as a solvent ; yet Professor Ramsey has calculated that if the sulphates of lime and soda, and the chlorides of sodium and magnesium, and the other mineral inn gredients they contain, were solidified, they would form in one year a square column 9 feet in diameter and no less than 140 feet in height. All this matter is now quickly conveyed by a stream of limpid water, in an invisible form, to the Avon, and by the Avon into the sea; but if, instead of being thus re moved, it were deposited round the orifice of erup tion, like the siliceous layers which encrust the circular basin of an Icelandic geyser, we should soon see a considerable cone built up, with a crater in the middle ; and if the action of the spring were intermittent, so that ten or twenty years should elapse between the periods when solid matter was emitted, or (say) an interval of three centuries, as in the case of Vesuvius between 1306 and 1631, the discharge would be on so grand a scale as to afford no mean obj-ct of comparison with the intermittent outpourings of a volcano. Dr. Daubeny, after de voting a month to the analysis of the Bath waters, in 1833, ascertained that the daily evolution of nitrogen gas amounted to no less than 250 cubic feet in volume. This gas, he remarks, is net only characteristic of hot springs but is largely disen gaged from volcanic craters during eruptions. It will, however, of course be admitted, as Profoseor Biechoff has o:nted out, that in some places organic matter has supplied a large part of the nitrogen evolved. Carbonic acid gas is another of the volatilised substances discharged by the Bath waters. The calculations made by the eminent German chemist (Dr. Gustav Biechoff) of the exact amount of distension which the origi❑ of new mineral products may cause, by adding to the vo lume of the rock, deserve the attention of geologists, as affording them aid in explaining those reiterated oscillations of level—those risings and sinking% of land—which have occurred on so grand a scale at successive periods of the past. There are, very probably, many distinct causes of such upward, downward, and la teral movements, and any new suggestion o❑ this head is most welcome; but I believe the expan, sion and contraction of solid rocks, when they are alternately heated and cooled, and the fusion and subsequent consolidation of mineral masses, will continue torankeas heretofore, as the most influential causes of such movements. The temperature of the Bath waters varies in the different springs from 117 deg. to 120 dcg. Fahrenheit. This, as before stated, is exceptionally high, when we duly allow for the great distance of Bath from the nearest region of active or recently extinct volcanoes and of violent earthquakes. The hot springs of Aix-la-Chapelle have a much higher temperature—viz., 135 deg. Fahrenheit—but they are situated within 40 miles of those cones and lava streams of the Eifel which, though they may have Tent their force ages before the earliest records of history, belong neverthelss to the most modern geological period. Bath is about 400 Miles distant from the same part of Germany, and 440 from Auvergne—another volcanic region— the latest eruptions of which were geologically coeval with those of Eifel. When these twe re gions in France and Germany were the theatres of frequent convulsions, we may well suppose that England was often more rudely shaken than now —and such shocks as that of October,last, the sound and rocking motion of which caused so great a sen sation as it traversed the southern part of the island, and seems to have been particularly violent in Herefordshire, may be only a languid reminder to us of a force of which the energy has been gra dually dying out. I have little doubt that the Bath springs, like most other thermal waters,mark the site of some great convulsion and fracture which took place in the crust of the earth at some former period—perhaps not a very remote one, geologically speaking. If we adopt the theory that the nitrogen is derived irem the deoxida don of atmospheric air carried down by rain-water, we may imagine the supply of this water to be fur nished by some mountainous region, possibly a dia. tant one, and that it descends through rents or porous rocks till it encounters some mass of heated matter by which it is thus converted into steam, and then driven upwards through a fissure. In its downward passage the water may derive its sul phate of lime, chloride of calcium, and other sub stances from the decomposition of the gypsous saline, calcareous, and other constituents of the rocks which it permeates. The greater part of the ingre dients are common to sea-water, and might suggest the theory of a marine origin; but the analysis of the Bath springs by Merck and Galloway shows that the relative proportion of the solid matter is far from agreeing with that of the sea. That some mineral springs, however, may derive an inexhaus tible supply, through rents and porous rocks, from the leaky bed of the ocean, is by no means an un reasonable theory, especially if we believe that the contiguity of nearly all the active volcanoes to the sea is connected with the access of salt water to the subterranean foci of volcanic heat. Professor Roscoe, of Manchester. has been lately engaged in making a careful analysis of the Bath waters, and has dis covered in them three metals which they were not previously known to contain—namely, copper, strontium, and lithium ; but he has searched in vain for cleiium and rubidium, those new metals, the existence of which has been revealed to us in the course of the last fe w years by what is called spec trum analysis. Professor Bunsen, of Heidelberg, led the way i❑ 1860, in the application of this new test to the hot waters of Baden-Baden and of Durk heim in the Palatinate. He observed iM the spectrum some coloured lines of which he could not interrret the meaning, and was determined not to rest till he had found out what they meant. This was no easy task, for it was necessary to evaporate 50 tons of water to obtain 200 grains of what proved to be two new metals. Taken together, their proportion to the water was only as one to three millions. He named the first cmdum, from the bluish-grey lines which it presented in the spectrum ; and the second rubi dium, from its two red lince. Since these successful experiments was made, th a lli u m, t o celled from its green line, was discovered in 1861 by Mr. Crookes ; and a fourth metal, named indium, from its indigo coloured band, was detected by Professor Richter, of Freiberg, in Saxony, in a zinc ore of the Hartz. It is impossible not to suspect that the wonderful effi- cacy of some mineral springs, both cold and thermal, in curing diseases, which no artificially prepared waters have as yet been able to rival may be connected with the presenceof one or more of those elementary bodies previously unknown ; and some newly-foun d ingredients, when procured in larger quantities, may furnish medical science with means of combating diseases which have hitherto baffled all human skill. While I was pursuing my inquiries respecting the Bath waters, I learned casually that a hot spring had been discovered at a great depth in a copper mine near Redruth, in Cornwall, having about as high a temperature as that of the Bath waters, and of which, strange to say, no account has yet been published. It seems that, in the year 1839, a level was driven from an old shaft, so as to intersect a rich copper mine at the depth of 1,350 feet from the surface. Through the contents of the lode a power. ful spring of hot water was observed to rise, which has continued to Bow with undiminished strength ever since. At my request, Mr Horton Davey, of Redrutb, had the kindness to send up to London many gallons of this water, which had been ana lysed by Professor Wm. Allen Miller, F.R.S., who finds that the quantity of solid matter is so great as to exceed by more than four times the proportion of that yielded by the Bath waters. Its composition is also in many respects very different ; for it con■ tains but little sulphate of lime, and is almost from the salts of magnesium. It is rich in the chlorides of calcium and sodium, and it contains one of the new metals—csesium, never before detected in any mineral spring in England; but its peculiar charac. teristic is the extraordinary abundance of lithium, of which a mere trace had been found by Professor Roscoe in the Bath waters, whereas in this Cornish hot spring this metal constitutes no less than a 26th part of the whole of the solid contents, which, as before stated, are so voluminous. Lithium was first made known in 1817 by Arfvedsen, who extracted it from petalite ; and it was believed to be extremely rare until Bunsen and Kirchhoff, in 1860, by means of spectrum analysis, showed that it was a most widely.diffaeed substance, existing in minute quan- titles in almost all mineral waters and in the sea as well as in milk, human blood, and the ashes of some plants. It has already been used in medi cine, and we may therefore hope that; now that it is obtainable in large quantities, and al a much cheaper rate than before the Wheat Clifford hot spring was analysed, it may become of high value. When we compare the temperature of the Bath springs, which issue at a level of less than 100 feet above the sea, with the Wheat Clif ford spring, found at a depth of 1,350 feet from the surface, we must of course make allowance for the increase of heat always experienced when we de scend into the interior of the earth. The difference would amount to 20 deg. Fehr., if we adopt the estimate deduced by Mr Hopkins from an accurate series of observations made in the Monkwearmouth shaft, near Durham, and in the Dukinfield shaft, near Manchester, each of them 2,000 feet in depth. Hot springs are for the most part charged with alkaline and other highly soluble substances, and as a rule are barren of the precious metals, geld,silver, and copper, as well as of tin, platinum, lead, and many others, a slight trace of copper in the Bath waters being exceptional. But there are other characters in the structure of the earth's crust more mysterious in their nature than the phenomena of metalliferous veins,on which the study of hot springs has thrown light—l allude to the metamorphism of sedimentary rocks. Strata of various ages, many of them once full of organic remains, have been ren dered partially or wholly crystalline. It is admitted on all hands that heat has been instrumental in bringing about this re-arrangement of particles, which when the metamorphism has been carried out to its fullest extent, obliterates all trace of the im bedded fossils. But as mountain masses many miles in length and breadth, and several thousands of feet in height, have undergone such alteration, it has always been difficult to explain in what manner an amount of heat capable of so entirely changing the molecular condition of sedimentary masses could have come into play without utterly annihilating every sign of stratification as well as of organic structure. Various experiments have led to the con clusion that the minerals which enter most largely into the composition of the metamphoric rocks have not been formed by crystallising from a state of fusion or in the dry way, but that they have been derived from liquid solutions in the wet way—a pro cess requiring a far less intense degree of heat. The changes which Daubree has shown to have been pro duced by the alkaline waters of Plombieres, in the Vosges, are more especially instructive. These thermal waters have a temperature of 160 deg Fahr., and were con veyed by the Romans to baths through long conduits or aqueducts. Tho foundations of some of their works con sisted of a bed of concrete made of time, fragments of brick, and sandstone. Through this and other masonry the hot waters have been percolating for centuries, and have given rise to various zsolites—apophyllite and chabazite among others; also to calcareous spar, arragonite, an i fluor spar, together with siliceous minerals, such as opal, all found in the interspaces of the bricks and mortar, or constituting part of their re-arranged materials. The quantity of heat brought into action in this instance in the course of 2,000 years has no doubt been enormous, although the intensity of it developed at any one moment has been always inconsider able. The study of late years of the constituent parts of gra nite has in like manner led to the conclusion that their con solidation has taken place at temperatures far below those formerly supposed to be indispensable. Gustav Rose has pointed out that the quartz of granite has the specific gra vity of 2'6, which characterises silica when it is precipitated from a liquid solvent, and not that inferior density, namely 2'3, which belongs to it when it cools and solidifies in the dry way from a state of fusion. But some geologists, when made aware of the intervention on a large scale of water in the formation of the component minerals of the granitic and volcanic rocks, appear of late years to have been too much disposed to dispense with intense heat when accounting for the formation of the crystalline and unstratified rocks. As water in a state of solid combination enters largely into the aluminous and some other minerals, and therefore plays no small part in the composition of the earth's crust, it follows that when rocks are melted water must be present, inde pendently of the supplies of rain water and sea water which find their way into the regions of subterranean heat. But the existence of water under groat pressure affords no argument against our at , ributing an excessively high temperature to the mass with which it is mixed up. Still less does the point to which the melted matter must be cooled down before it consolidates or crystallises into lava or granite afford any test tf the degree of heat which the same matter must have acquired when it was melted and made to form lakes and seas in the interior of tho earth's crust. We learn from Bunsen's ex periments on the Great Geyser in Iceland, that at the depth of only seventy-four feet, at the bottom of the tube, a column o water may be in a state of rest, and yet possess a heat of 120 deg. Centigrade, or 24 deg. Fahrenheit. What, then, may not the temperature of such water he at the depth of a few thousand feet ? It might soon attain a white heat under pressure ; and as to lava, those who have beheld it issue, as I did in 1858, from the south-western flanks of Vesuvius, with a surface white and glowing like that of the sun, and who have felt the scorching heat which it radiates, will form a high conception of the intense temperature of the same lava at the bottom of a vertical column several miles high, and communicating with a great reservoir of fused matter, which, if it were to begin at once to cool down, and were never to receive future accessions of heat, might require a whole geological period before it solidified. Of such slow refrigeration hot springs may be among the most effective instruments, abstracting slowly from the subterranean mol ten mass that heat which clouds of vapour are seen to carry off in a latent form from a volcanic crater during an erup • tion, or from a lava stream during its solidification. I hinted at the beginning of this address, that the hot springs of Bath may be of no high antiquity, geologically speaking— not that I can establish this opinion by any positive proofs, but I infer it from the mighty changes which this region, has undergone since the time when the British seas, rivers, and Ides were inhabited by the existing species of Testacea• It is already more than a quarter of a century since Sir Rode rick Murchison first spoke of the Malvern Straits, meaning thereby a channel of the sea which once separated Wales from England, That such marine straits really extended, at a modern period, between what are now the estuaries of the Severn and the Dee, has been lately confirmed in a satisfactory manner by the dis covery of marine shells of recent species of drift covering the water-sheds which divides those estuaries. At the time when these shells were living, the Cotswold Hills, at the foot of which this city is built, formed one of the numerous islands of an archipelago into which Eng land, Ireland, and Scotland were then divided. The amount of vertical movement which would be necessary to restore such a state of the surface as prevailed when the pesitien of land and sea were so different would be very great. No - where in the world, according to our present information, is the evidence of upheaval, as manifested by upraised marine shells, so striking as in Wales. The whole fauna bears testimony to a climate colder than that now experi- THE SUN, LONDON, THURSDAY EVENING, SEPTEMBER 15, 1864. enced in these latitudes, though not to such extreme cold as that implied by the fauna of some of the glacial drift of Scotland. Shells were procured at the extraordinary height of 1,360 feet above the sea-level, and they demonstrate an upheaval of the bed of the sea to that amount in the time of living Testacea. A considerable part of what is called the glacial epoch had already elapsed before the shelly strata in question were deposited on Moel Tryfaen. The evidence of a period of great cold in England and North America in the times referred to is now so universally admitted by geo logists that I shall take it for granted in this address, and briefly consider what may have been the probable causes of the refrigeration of central Europe at the era in question. One of these causes, first suggested eleven years ago by a celebrated Swiss geologist, has not, I think, received the at tention which it well deserved. When I proposed, in 1833, the theory that alterations in physical geography might have given rise to those revolutions in climate which the earth's surface has experienced at successive epochs, it was objected by many that the signs of upheaval and depression were too local to account for such general changes of tem perature. But the more we examine the monuments of the ages which preceded the historical, the more decided become the proofs of a general alteration in the position, depth, and height of seas, continents, and mountain chains since the commencement of the glacial period. The meteorologist also has been learning of late that the quantity of ice and snow in certain latitudes, depends not merely on the height of mountain chains, but also on the distribution of the sur rounding sea and land even to considerable distances. M. Escher von der Linth gave it has his opinion, in 1852, that if it were true, as Ritter had suggested, that the great African desert, or Sahara, was submerged within the modern or post-tertiary period, that same submergence might ex plain away why the Alpine glaciers had attained so recently those colossal dimensions which, reasoning on geological data, Venetz and Charpontier had assigned to them. Since Escher first threw out his hint, the fact that the Sahara was really covered by the sea at no distant period has been con firmed by many new proofs. The distinguished Swiss geo logist himself has just returned from an exploring expedi tion through the eastern part of the Algerian desert, in which he was accompanied,by M. Desor, of Neuchatel, and Professor Martins, of Montpellier. The three experienced observers satisfied themselves, during the last winter, that the Sahara was under water during the period of the living species of Testacea. The ancient sea appears once to have stretched from the Gulf of Cabes, in Tunis, to the West Coast of Africa, north of Senegambia, having a width of several hundred (perhaps where greatest, according to Mr Tristram, 800) miles. The high lands of Barbary, inclu ding Morocco, Algeria, and Tunis, must have been sepa rated at this period from the rest of Africa by a sea. All that we have learnt from zoologists and botanists in regard to the present fauna and flora of Barbary favours this hypo thesis, and seems at the same time to point to a former connection of that country to Spain, Sicily, and South Italy. In whatever direction, therefore, we look, we see grounds for assuming that a map of Africa in the glacial period would no more resemble our present maps of that continent than Europe now resemble North America. If, then, argues Escher, the Sahara was a sea in post-tertiary times, we may understand why the Alpine glaciers formerly attained such gigantic dimensions, and why they have left moraines of such magnitude on the plans of Northern Italy and the lower country of Switzerland. M. Denzler in a memoir on this subject, observes that the Fohn (Sirocco) blew tempestuously at Algiers on the 17th of July, 1841, and then crossing the Mediterranean, reached Marseilles in six hours. In five more hours it was at Geneva and the Valais, throwing down a large extent of forest in the latter district, while in the cantons of Zurich and the Grisons it suddenly turned the leaves of many trees from green to yellow. In a few hours new-mown grass was dried and ready for the haystack; for although, in passing over the Alpine snows, the cirocco absorbs much moisture, it is far below the point of sa t uration when it reaches the sub alpine country to the north of the great chain. MM. Escher and Denzler have both of them observed on different occa sions that a thickness of one foot of snow has disappeared in four hours during the prevalence of this wind. No wonder, therefore, that the Fohn is much dreaded for the sudden inundations which it sometimes causes. The snow line of the Alps was seen by Mr Iracher, the astronomer, from his observatory at Neuchatel, by aid of the telescope, to rise sensibly every day while the wind was blowing. Its influ ence is by no means confined to the summer season, for in the winter of 1852 it visited Zurich at Christmas, and in a few days all the surrounding country was stripped of its snow, even in the shadiest places, and on the crests of high ridges. It is well-known that the number of days during which particular winds prevail, from year to year, varies considerably. Between the years 1812 and 1820 the Fohn was less felt in Swflzerland than usual; and what was the conscqu.nce ? All the glaciers during those eight or nine years, increased in height, and crept down below their former limits in their respective valleys. Many similar examples might be cited for the sensitiveness of the ice to slight variations of temperature. If such changes can be experienced in less than a century, without any perceptible modification in the physical geography of that part of Asia, what mighty effect may we not imagine tho sub mergence of the Sahara to have produced in adding to the size of the Alpine glaciers; If, between the year 1812 and 1820, a mere diminution of the number of days dur• ing which the sirocco blew could so much promote the growth and onward movement of the ice, how much greater a change would result from the total cessation of the same wind 2 But this would give no idea of whit must have happened in the glacial period ; for we cannot suppose the action of the south wind to have been sus pended ; it was not in abeyance, but its character was entirely different, and of an opposite nature, under the altered geographical conditions above contemplated. First, instead of passing over a parched and scorching desert, be tween the twentieth and thirty fifth parallels of latitude, it would plentifully absorb moisture from a sea many hun dreds of miles wide. Next, in its course over the Medi terranean, it would take up still more aqueous vapour; and when, after complete saturation, it struck the Alps, it would be driven up into the higher and more rarified regions of the atmosphere. There the arid current, as fast as it was cooled, would discharge its aqueous burden in the form of snow, so that the same wind which is now called " the devourer of ice" would become its principal feeder. If we thus embrace Escher's theory, as accounting in no small degree for the vast size of the extinct glaciers of Switzerland and Northern Italy, we are by no meansdtbarred from accepting at the same time Char peutier's suggestion, that the Alps in the glacial period were 2,000 or 3,000 feet higher than they are now, Such a difference in altitude may have been an auxiliary cause of the extreme cold, and seems the more probable now that we have obtained unequivocal proofs of such great oscillations of level in Wales within the period under consideration. We may also avail ourselves of another source of refrigeration which may have coincided in time with the submergence of the Sahara, namely, the diversion of the Gulf Stream from its present course. The shape of Europe and North America, or the bounda ries of sea and land, departed so widely in the glacial period from those now established, that we cannot sup pose the Gulf Stream to have taken at that period its pre sent north-western course across the Atlantic. If it took some other direction, the climate of the north of Scotland would, according to the calculations of Mr Hopkins, suffer a diminution in its average annual temperature of 12 deg. Fahr., while that of the Alps would lose 2 deg. Fehr. A combination of all the conditions above enume rated would certainly be attended with so great a revo lution in climate as might go far to account for the ex cessive cold which was developed at so modern a period in the earth's history. The more we study and comprehend the geographical changes of the glacial period, and the mi grations of animals and plants to which it gave rise, the higher our conceptions are raised of the duration of that subdivision of time, which, though vast when measured by the succession of events comprised in it, was brief, if esti mated by the ordinary rules of geological classification. The glacial period was, in fact, a mere episode in ono of the great epochs of the earth's history; for the inhabitants of the lands and seas, before and after the grand development of snow and ice, were nearly the same. As yet we have no satisfactory proof that man existed in Europe or elsewhere daring the period of extreme cold ; but our investigations on this head are still in their infancy. In an early portion of the post- g l ac i a l per i o d it h as b een ascertained that man flourished in E urope ; an d i n t rac i n g the signs of his exist ence, from th e hi s t or i ca l ages t o those immediately ante cedent, and so backward into more ancient times, we gradu ally approach a dissimilar geographical state of things, when the climate was colder, and when the configuration of the surface departed considerably from that which now pre vails. Archaeologists are satisfied that in central Europe, the age of bronze weapons preceded the Roman invasion of Switzerland ; and prior to the Swiss lake-dwellings of the bronze age were those in which stone weapons alone were used. The Danish kitchen-middens seem to have been of about the same date; but what M. Lartet has called the reindeer period of the South of France was probably ante ear, and connected with a somewhat colder climate. Of still higher antiquity was that age of ruder implements of stone such as were buried in the fluviatilo drift of Amiens and Abbeville, and which were mingled in the prime gravel with the bones of extinct quadrupeds, such as the elephant, rhinoceros, bear, tiger, and hyena. Between the present era and that of those earliest vestages yet discovered of our race, valleys have been deepened, the course cf eubterranean rivers,w la ieh once flawed through caverns, has been changed, and many species of wild quadrupeds have disappeared. The bed of the sea, moreover, has in the same ages been lifted up, in many places hundreds of feet above its former level, at d the outlines of mar y a coast entirely altered. MM, de Verneuil and Louis Lartet have recently:found near Madrid fossil teeth of the African elephant, in old valley drift, con taining flint implements of the same antique typo as those having of Amiens and Abb ev ill e. P roo f o f th e same e l ep h an t inhabited th the human period in had the previously post-Pliocene h eand brought probably within to light by Baron Anca, during his exploration of the bone caves of Palermo. We have now therefore evidence of man having co-existed in Europe with three species of elephant, two of them extinct (namely, the mammoth and theElep has antiques), and a third the same as that which still survives in Africa. As to the first of these—the mammoth—l am aware that some writers contend that it could not have died out many tens of thousands of years before our time, because its flesh had been found preserved in ice, in Siberia, in so fre.ll a state as to serve as food for dogs, bears, and wolves; but this argument seems to me fallacious. Middendorf, in 1843, after digging through some thickness of frozen soil in Siberia, came down upon an icy mass, in which the carcase of a mammoth was imbedded, so perfect that, among other parts, the pupil of its eye was taken out, and is now pre served in the - Museum of Moscow. No ono will deny that this elephant had lain for several thousand years in its icy envelope ; and if it had been left undisturbed, and the cold had gone on increasing, for myriads of centuries, we might reasonably expect that the frozen flesh might continue undecayed until a second glacial period had passed away. When speculations on the long series of events which occurred in the glacial and post-glacial periods are indulged in, the imagination is apt to take alarm at the immensity of the time required to interpret the monuments of these ages, all referable to the era of existing species. In order to abridge the number of centuries which would otherwise be indispensable, a disposition is shown by many to magnify the rate of channel in prehistoric times, by investing the causes which have modified the animate and inanimate world with extraordinary and excessive energy. The living generation, when called upon to make grants of thousands of centuries in order to explain the events of what is called the modern period, shrink naturally at first from making what seems so lavish an expenditure of the past time, Throughout our early education we have been accustomed to such strict economy in all that relates to the chronology of the earth and its inhabitants in remote ages, so fettered have we been by old traditional beliefs, that even when our reason is convinced,and wo are persuaded that we ought to make more liberal grants of time to the geologist, we feel how hard it is. I will now briefly allude in con clusion to two points on which a gradual change of opinion has been taking place among geologists of late years. First, as to whether there has been a continuous succession of events in the organic and inorganic worlds, uninterrupted by violent and general catastrophes ; and secondly, whether clear evidence can be obtained of a period antecedent to the creation of organic beings on the earth. On the first point, it is worthy of remark that, although a belief in sudden and general convulsions has been losing ground, as also the doctrine of abrupt transitions from one set of species of ani mals and plants to another of a very different typo, yet the whole series of the records which have been handed down to us arc now more than ever regarded as fragmentary. They ought to be looked upon as more perfect, because numerous gaps have been filled up, and in the formations newly- intercalated in the series we have found many miss ing links and various intermediate gradations between the nearest allied forms previously known in the animal and vegetable worlds. Yet the whole body of monuments which we are endeavouring to decipher appears more de fective than before. For my own part, I agree with Mr Darwin in considering them as a mere fraction of those which have once existed, while no approach to a perfect series was ever formed originally, it having never been part of the plan of Nature to leave a complete record of all her works and operations for the enlightenment of rational beings who might study them in after ages. In refe rence to the other great question, or the earliest date of vital phenomena on this planet, the late discoveries in Canada have at last demonstrated that certain theories founded in Europe on mere negative evidence were altogether delusive. In the course of a geological survey, carried on under the able direction of Sir William E. Logan, it has been shown that northward of the river St. Lawrence there is a vast series of stratified and crystalline rocks of gneiss, mica -schist, quartzite, and limestone, about 40,000 feet in thickness, which have been celled L iurentian. They are more ancient than the oldest fossiliferous strata tf Europe, or those to which the term primordial had been rashly as signed. In the first place, the newest part of this great crystalline series is unconformable to the ancient fossili ferous or so-called primordial rocks which overlie it ; so that it must have undergone disturbing movements before the latter or primordial set were formed, Then, again, the older half of the Laurentian series is unconformable to the newer portion of the same. It is in this lowest and most ancient system of crystalline strata that a limestone about a thou sand feet thick has been observed, containing organic re mains. These fossils have been examined by Dr Dawson of Montreal, and he has detected in them, by aid of the mi. croscope, the distinct structure of a large species of Ithize pod. Fine specimens of this fossil, called Eozeon Canadense, have been brought to Bath by Sir William Logan, to be exhibited to the members of the association. W T C have every reason to suppose that the rooks in which these animal remains are included are of as old a date a 3 any of the formations named az )ic in Europe, if not older; so that they precede in date rocks once supposed to hive been formed before any organic beings had been created. Sir Charles L; ell concluded by stating that he would not venture on " speculations respecting the signs of a begin ning' or 'the prospects of an end' of our terrestrial System —that wide ocean of scientific conjecture on which so many theorists, before my time, have buffered shipwreck." SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS. Ti res.—The prospect of an Armistice in the United States naturally draws attention to the con dition of the countries which border on that great Federation. In the extreme uncertainty which over.hadows the destiny of the American Continent, in the doubt as to what may be the effect upon the minds of a proud and now almost a military people of their admitted failure to coerce a smaller nation by force of arms, we ask ourselves whether the result will ha to disgust the public mind with that vain appetite for military glory which has led the nation into such unexampled calamities, or whether they sock to avenge the deecreclit of their arms and compensate thErnsslvas for their recent losses by the invasion of neighbouring States. Toe question is momentous for Mexico and for Canada, and we have endeavoured to discharge our duty by pointing out the necessity of defence, sod endeavouring to arouse our own colony to a sense of its danger. The lan guage we have held has been plain and uniform, and yet, though plain, not such as could give reason able offence to any community which feels a respect for itself, and estimates properly its duties and its responsibilities. We have stated that Canada leans on a broken reed if she supposes that, in case of an invasion from America, any considerable portion of the burden of her defence can be borne by thi s country. We think we need not argue or discuss what would be the duty of England in such a con juncture. It is quite enough for us to confine ou r. selves to the consideration of possibilities. Let Canada consider the forces with which England took the field in the Crimea, and let her, on the other hand, reflect on the forces with which for a succession of years American Generals have been carrying on a civil war. All, and more than all, that .England can spare would not suffice for the wear and tear, we do not say of a campaign, but of a single great battle conducted on Gen. Geant's principles. Whatever may be our wishes or our opinions, it is absolutely out of our power to give Canada efficient assistance by land in the event of war. We are the more anxious to impress this upon the Canadians because we observe in recent news paper articles a feeling of irritation against the coun try, and a disposition to accuse England of failing short of her duty. Ws have allusions to the deser tion of Britain by the Romans, and a comparison of the treatment of Canada to the treatment of Den mark. 'We beg our Canadian contemporaries not to waste precious time in recrimination, or seek to involve a question in angry discussion which requires all the good sense and calmness that can be brought to bear upon it. 'Were we to hold out to Canada the most unbounded hopes of the most unlimited assistance in case of invasion, Canada must very well know that it is quite out of our power to give effect to them. By sea we are able to give efficient help; but all the fair speeches and promises in the world would not enable us to succour Canada by land if once involved in a serious contest with even the Northern half of the American Republic. If, then, we urge Canada to do what she has never yet done make an exertion in some degree worthy of the crisis in which she finds herself—we do so for her sake much more than for our own. It is upon her, not upon us, that the miseries of the invasion will fall, and it is in her power, and not in ours, to take those measures by which alone that invasion can be repelled. In a letter signed " An Old Soldier," we have an authentic account of what Canada is doing for the purpose of self-defence. If she upon de liberate consideration thinks these measures satis factory to her, we have little to say ; but certainly, if British troops were likely to be called upon to make a campaign in Canada, such a statement would be exceedingly unsatisfactory to us. The Canadian Volunteers, on paper, amount, it should seem, to twenty-one thousand ; of these about ten thousand have been organised into battalions. Again, of that ten thousand a majority—shall we say six thousand? —have been brigaded with regular troops, and gone creditably through a field-day. Fifteen thou sand of these Volunteers have been inspected, and the remaining six thousand have been clothed and armed, if the General who is to command this gallant force can contrive to make as much of them by division and subdivision in the field as our cor respondent has done on paper, we do not doubt he has discovered the means of meeting with twenty thousand him that cornett' against him with two hundred thousand ; but, unfortunately, the total re mains unaltered, but we must accept the startling fact that ten thousand men are all that Canada has to produce by way of disciplined troops in the fourth year of the great American civil war. T here . are, to be sure, besides, eighty-eight thousand that is, it is proposed to ballot for them end enroll them in battalions, They are to be undrilled, but organise l into battalions and core:pinks, and coma mended by officers thoroughly instructed in the mili tary profession. Nothing is wanting, our correspon dent says, for the annual drilling of a large number of these men but the voting of a sum of tramey by the Assembly for the purpose, which will of course be forthcoming, The man must be unreasonable indeed who is not satisfied by these statements that Canada has at her disposal eighty-eight thousand available Militia ! To make our account complete we ought to add that very Efficient steps have been taker; for the iustructioa of officers, so that when the Canadian Militia does come into existence there seems no reason to doubt that it will be ably and efficiently commanded. As our opinion is chal lenged on these arrangements, we can have no hesitation whatever in saying that they appear to us sadly inadequate to the demands of the present crisis—so inadequate that we are really surprised they should be put forward with any semblance of satisfaction. Most sincerely do we hope that the crisis will never arrive by which the efficiency of these preparations—which have not even the ordi nary advantage of looking well on paper—may be really tried. We earnestly recommend the Cana dians to look into the question while it is yet time. A combined notion of all the British provinces on the eastern coast of North America would seem a primary and indispensable condition for anything like an efficient defence. The second condition is equally clear and equally important. Being unable to encounter their neighbours with a force of any thing like numerical equality, the British provinces should strive to compensate this inevitable defect by superior drill and discipline. It is only by an army somewhat on the European pattern that Canada can hope to maintain her independence. As long as the rest of America was content with mere Militia organisation, there was no very urgent reason why Canada should not be content too. But the condition of things is altered. In the times that are coining we shall probably find America divided into at least two Confederations ; their rivalry and emulation will maintain their armies at a high pitch of efficiency, and it will be fatal for Canada to suffnt herself, as seems only too probable, to be outdone in discipline as well as numbers. PoST.—Lancashire and its prospects during the coming winter are again deserving of our serious consideration. We have seen that once unparal leled distress soften down all its hard features, and mitigate its terrible severity before the astounding influx of national bounty. We have seen it in many instances deprived of its keenest edge by the noble liberality of certain millowners who, at great loss to themselves, have made employment for their hands when there was no inducement except a sense of public duty to do so. We have seen, too, an ex tensive mitigation of the want of employment successfully achieved by the change in the law which enabled the local authorities to undertake many needful and most important public works, and we have seen—best sign of all—a gradual but very decided increase in the imports of cotton, to be followed, as all appear ances justify us in expecting, by a permanent supply from various new quarters, which will at some future day leave us less at the mercy of poli tical events in America than we have hitherto been. For all this we cannot be too grateful. It might have been vastly otherwise. That terrible want of work and bread which came with the suddenness of a summer storm, when first the Northern fleet blockaded the Southern ports, might have been but the beginning of a terrible social and political convulsion. Many of us can remember the time instantly followed such a calamity wou d have been followed by organised plans of pablic disturbance, by riots, by firing of mills, the demolition of mill owners' residences, the breaking open of banks, the defiance of public law, calling out of the military and shedding of blood. Nothing in English history is so demonstrative of the thorough, real, and bene ficial progress of the English people than this Lan cashire distress. Never in any period would Govern ment have felt itself strong enough to have braved the risk of a Lancashire enzeuta in preference to infringing a great principle of public policy, by deputing from the strict attitude of neutrality which deliberate wisdom had pronounced to be right. And, emphatically, never before would the people of Lancashire have had the political know ledge, the clear sense of duty, the confidence in public men, and the selferespect and self-control which in the late trial enabled them to endure the severest privations rather than utter a word or lift a hand to endanger peace and order, or tc reflect in even the most distant manner upon the men who were directing the policy of the country. The noble example set by these men told with an electric force upon the whole nation. It touched the very heart of all sorts and conditions of men, till whole parishes vied with one another who conld make the mo,t sacrifices or most loudly express its sympathy and admiration. But the bounty of those who gave their money and their sympathy from a distauce, great and noble as it often was, was dwarfed to a trifle compared with the self-denial of people in the upper and middle classes on the spot, who day after day served on committees and did all the drudgery of an extensive organisation,and night after night taught in schools, kept sewing classes together, cared for the your:g, instructed the igno rant, multiplied the motives to do well, and mini mised the Avenues of temptation. That time of trial was one of singular temptation, too, and the meed of praise mu3t indeed be great which can adequately extol those who, at the sacrifice of every domestic comfort, forewent the luxuries of leisure, and ease, and well-provided homes that they might lend their aid and influence to preserve unstained the honour of women and the sobriety of men against the manifold snares which idleness and want had cast about their path. Only thirty years ego the idea of the Church and her members doing the part of administering angels would have been scouted with the laugh of the scoffer, all through the districts which have most severely felt this cotton famine. Indeed, any reli gious agency would have been scorned. For at least the greater number of the population looked on the Church as an iniquitous system of priesthood which fattened at the cost of the people —at Romanism as something even worse than the Church—and at Dis sent as only so far good as it was politically antes gonistic to both. But when the cru s h o f an unpre cedented calamity fell upon Lancashire three Sears ago it smote down almost everything except the religion and the morals of the people. Nothing survived that fearful wreck so much as the feelings of self-respect, religious duty, and regard for the rights of conscience. Guided by these, the men and women of Lancashire bore their sorrows with a brave heart, and attracted to themselves the bounty of the whole community. The nation subscribed its tens of thousands, the Legislature altered the poor law—supposed to be the most iron thing in Christendom—the Church put forth the utmost energy of her parochial system, Dissent lent its force to the general effort, Roman Catholics mus tered to the rescue, every combination and organi sation of men vied with all the rest in doing its share. And thus the crisis was tided over, never, we trust, to return. Practically, it is now a thing of the part. But Mr Farnall, in his last report laid before the central committee, utters an ominous word of warning, and recalls us to the fact that winter is at our heels, and that, with shortening days and severer weather, there be an increase of distress, and incapability of outdoor labour, and a need therefore of wise and careful provission that a crisis , surmounted thus far shall not bo less carefully treated nt its end than its beginning. Every week will now see an addition to the number receiving parochial relief, and to tle number requiring aid from charitable sources. Yet the balance at the bankers of the central committee is reduced to £124,000. This would only have sufficed for a month's disbursements two years ago. It is now all that can be trusted for the whole of the ap proaching winter. Against this, however, must be set the fact that employment is better and is likely to continue better than it has been at any period since the cotton supply failed, so that there is no chance of the same demands being made upon charitable resources, which were inevitable at first. To this must be added the reasonable prospect that at length wiser counsels will prevail with American statesmen, and that a prolonged armistice and a raising of the blockade will complete the deliver. ance of Lancashire from one of the hardest trials that any class of industry has ever had to bear. C OMPOSITION DEEDS.—Mr Justice Shee was occupied at the Judges' Chambers on Tuesday with the vexed question of composition deeds. Mr Cattlin ap plied for the release of the itev. William Wilson King from Whitecroas street prison. He had executed a composition deed, which was submitted to his lordship as a valid deed. Mr Justice Shee after an inspection expressed his doubt on the subject, and after a discussion required proof that the requirements of the Bankruptcy Act had been complied with. Mr Cattlin said the question was now becoming very serious. The Lord Chancellor had decided that he had no power to release sitting in bankruptcy, and the commis sioners had, acting on that opinion, declined to discharge. The only remedy was to a common law judge, and if he held that it was not a valid deed imprisonment was likely to be perpetual, as the Lord Justices had held that a man who had made a composition deed could no make himself a bankrupt. Eventttally the case stood adjourn2d for further information. LIVERPOOL, Sept. 13.—The steamer Lilian,which was captured off Wilmington, Aug. 26, was bound from that port for Nassau with cotton, 50 bales of which had been thrown overboard. She was taken to Beaufort, North Carolina, whence she would be sent to Boston. [ADVERTISEMENT.] -- Holloway's Pills Remarkable Recovery.---Mr Gamis, chemist, Yeovil, writes that a lady residing in that town had for many years been severely suffering from indigestion and liver complaint, for the relief of which her medical man told her he could do nothing further. Unnerved by this announcement she sought sympathy from friends, one of - whom recommended Hollo way's pills, which were at once procured. The invalid, carefully attending to the accompanying directions, took the pills, and soon perceived a change which signally as. tonished and delighted her. She gradually got quite well. Pains in the side, heaviness in the head, confusion of thought, giddiness, low spirits, and many other sufferings, indicative of a disorded liver, can be dispelled with ease and certainty by this medicine. The Murder of Mr. Briggs. At th© Worship-street Policecourt yesterday, George Augustus King, 32, of Coburg Cottage, Wick-lane, Bow publisher, was brought up for re-examination before Mr Ellison, charged, upon his own confession, with being con— cerned with Muller in the murder of the late Mr Briggs on the North London Railway, at Wick-lane, Bow, and also with being drunk and incapable of taking care of himself at the Bow police station. I\lr Abbott appeared for the prosecution, and Mr Vanu for the defence. Mr Abbott—l understand, sir, that there is no farther evidence to connect the prisoner with the murder than his own voluntary confession; but there is this fact in the case, that he really was at the Mitford :;astle Tavern at the time the body was supposed to h,:vc been ruu over on he rail- way, that he accompanied it there, and assisted in bathing the temples of the deceased. There are several other wit- nesses who might be examined to confirm the terms of tho statement the prisoner made to Mr Buckley, of the Rano lagh Arms Tavern, if necessary, but as all the other wit • nesses who might possibly be able to prove any further con nection on the part of the prisoner with the circumstances attending the deceased's death aro now absent from this country, [ would suggest that there should be another re mand to allow of their examination, should it be considered. advisable, Mr Ellison—Yes, I think that thos3 witnesses should have an opportunity of being examined ; and (to the pri soner) I cannot part with you yet. Mr Abbot—lt has been supposed that Mr Buckley is the prosecutor in this case, Ho is not so. The police are tho prosecutors, and Mr Buckley is anxious it should be so , stated. Inspector Honey—l have Mr Hudson, the landlord of the Mitford Castle, here, your worship, ho can prove that the prisoner was in his house at 8 o'clock that evening, and was there till an alarm was raised that a man had been run over on the rails. Mr Ellison—Very well, then let him stand forward. Mr Thomas Hudson —I am the landlord of the Mitford Castle, in Wick-lane, Victoria Park. The prisoner came to my house at 8 o'clock on the night of Mr Briggs' murder. I did not see him myself then—he did not come under my notice till 9 o'clock, which was the time I first eaw him. The body of Mr Briggs was brought to my house about 25 minutes past 10, and the prisoner from 9 o'clock till that time was under my observation. He was in my parlour all the time, except that he went out once or twice to bring in a pint of ale from the bar, but he was never out of my sight more than five minutes at any one time. Mr Ellison—How came you to notice the prisoner so par ticularly ?—Witness— For the simple reason that he is thero pretty well every night. Mr Safford (the clerk)—Were you out of the room your self ?—Witness--Only once or twice to go to the bac, and I can aver that the prisoner was not out of the room at any time more than fiveminutes till Mr Briggs's body was picked up off the line, I could call four or five other persons who were there at the same time, but they cannot come hero unless they are paid for their loss of work. Mr Safford—How do you know it was 8 o'clock when the prisoner came to your house ?—liritness—l do not know that personally; it was 9 when I first saw him,but I under stand from my people that he was, as I say, in the house at S o'clock. Mr Ellison—At what time did Mr Briggs start from Fenchurch-street ?—lnspector Honey—He started about 10 o'clock, sir, I believe. Mr Ellison—ln what time would the train reach this spot P—lnspector Honey—They would take about a quar ter of an hour to go from Fenchurch-street to Bow. Mr Hudson—lt is quite an impossibility, sir, that the prisoner could have had anything to do with the murder. Mr Ellison—There is no evidence at present to show at what precise time Mr Briggs started, Mr Safford (to Inspector Honey)—A description was given of some pe-son who was supposed to have been in the carriage with Mr Briggs at the time ; have you got that de scription P—lnspector Honey—l have not, sir. Mr Safford—Has the description been compared with the prisoner ? Inspector Honey—lt has not sir. Mr Ellison—Were you present at the inquest I Inspec tor Honey—No, I was not, sir. Mr Ellison (to the prisoner)—You have made a state ment in which you said that after the murder was committed you went to the Mitford Castle, and remained there some time, after being present at the murder and before the body was brought into the house. The witness called proves that you were, no doubt, at the house, but the time is not wholly accounted for, and, as I must have that matter cleared up, I shall remand you, but for as short a time as possible- - three days. The prisoner, who was now much agitated, and displayed none of the confidence and bravado ho had before shown, humbly said, " Thank you, sir ; will you take bail ?" but Mr Ellison declined to do so, and the prisoner was removed. COUNTRY MARKETS. LYN N—TUESDAY. At today's market the supply of wheat was small, and the dull advices from Mark-lane caused a slow trade. Bar ley improved is supply, and 6d to le cheaper. Beans and outs in favour of buyers. White wheat 41s to 4Gs'i Barley 36s to 370 RA.. 4os to 426 I grinding ..29s to 31e Beans .40s to 42s 1 Oats.. .22s to 26s 01d... Ms to 37s I Peas —s to ---4 Averages Wheats, 42 408 Od. 3d—barloy, 31s 10d—beans, DULL-TUESDAY. At our market to-day there was a large supply of Eng" lish wheat, which sold at about the quotations of lust week for old sorts, and new declined la per qr. Foreign wheat dull. Oats, beans, and peas rather easier, MARKET HARBOROUGII-Tv ESDAY. At our corn market to-day the supply of wheat WO about the usual, and prices slightly in favour of buyers• —White wheat, 43s to 48s; red, 39s to 43s per 36 stone- Malting barley at 30s to 32s per qr.; grinding, 27s to 29 5 per 30 st, Oats, old, 26s to 31.'s; new, 20s to 210 per 30 at. ; beans, 34s to 42s per qr. MELTON MOWBRAY—TUESDAY. Wheat in moderate supply, and prices ruled at about the same as last week. Oats and beans were in,demand. The following were the currencies :—New, white;wheat 42s Od to 46s Od ; new red, 38s Od to 44s per 36 stone! beans, 38s to 42s for old ; new sorts, 35s to 37s per 38 st• • barley, —s to —s for malting, and 27s to 29s per qr. for grinding; new oats, 20s to 25s Od per 24 stone; old, 24s to 295. NEWCASTLE- ON-TYNE-TUESDAY. This morning at our market wheat and other grain Nridg moderate, and sold at no advance on former rates. Bar' 6d lower than last Saturday, with a dull trade. There WO a good arrival of foreign oats. CASE OF LANDLORD AND TENANT.—At the Judges' Chambers yesterday Mr Chitty applied on the part of Frederick Insoll, a prisoner in Ifereford Gaol, to put in bait to prosecute an appeal at the Quarter Sessions, under extra" ordinary circumstances. Insoll was a bankrupt, and a tenant of a Mr Masefield ; ho removed his goods away front the place, and was summoned before justices in Petty Sea' sions at Ledbury, and committed under the Act of the 11th of George 11., passed in 1738, for two months, for fraudw lently depriving the landlord of his rent by cistress. stated that he was a bankrupt and protected ; on which the justices held that ho had no goods to distrain upon. and committed him for two months, although the Act state that an offender should be committed for six months fa hard labour. The commitment was made on the 11th of August, and on the 30th of August an application was mad° on his behalf to Mr Justice Slice, on the ground that the commitment was bad. His lordship, however, refused to interfere, and the facts were brought under his notice on an application to put in bail to prosecute an appeal' Mr Butterworth, on the other side, contended that tho application was made too late, and under the Act in Tice' tion the order having been executed, and the time more than half expired, it could not be granted. Mr Chitty said all application had been made to the justices a few days since, and they held it was " too late." He, however, contended thet under a case ho cited an application might be made before the expiration of the imprisonment. It was a mon strous case, and, according to a recent case which had been reported in the newspapers, a bankrupt was entitled to hie protection from a debt, and the commitment could be g ot rid of by paying a sum of money. Mr Justice Sheo dered the act of Parliament, and the authorities cited. ni s i lordship hold that as the ord er h a d b een execu t e d h o c ould not interfere. Mr Chitty intimated that other proceeding s would be adopted in the mutter. Births. CECIL.—On the 11th inst., at 11, Duchess street, Ladl Robert Cecil, of a son. ITA.NCOCILS.—On the 13th inst., at Upper Weston, near Ross, Herefordshire, the wile of Arthur Annesley cocks, Eeq., of a am. lIILL.—On the 13th inst., at Bruce Castle, Tottenham, the wile of George B. Hill, of a daughter. RICE.—On the 13th inst., at 17, Eaton-place, S., the Hoof Mrs. Charles Spring Rice, of a son. Marriages. FRTNANTLE—HALL. — On the 14th inst., at Saint Paul? , Knightsbridge, Lieut.-Colonel Arthur Freniewle, Cold stream Guards, to Mary, daughter of the lute 'UAW' Hall, Esq., of Findon-place, Sussex. HICKS—WATTS.—On the 13. h inst., at Oadby, Henri Hicks, Esq., of Grange•ror.d, Canonbury, London; to Harriet, the second daughter of William Watts, Esq ► ° Oadby, Leicestershire. Deaths. Cni.'wrunn.--On the 10th inst., at Jersey, Major-Gener al A. E. Crawford, late R,A., aged 77. noitsreiL.—On the 9th inst., at Sneinton, Nottinghamh Miss Horsfall, aged 80. LEVESSAGE —On the 13th inst., at 75, Elgin-crescen t ' Kensington, Peter Leversage, Esq., aged GO. MADox.—On the 13th inst., at Greenwich, James Fuller Madox, Esq., aged 75. SEDDON.—On the 13th inst., at Kentiah-town, Thono ll Seddon, Esq., aged 72. London: PrinZed and Prbished by WILLIAM ANDREW,!' of No. 112, Strand, Printer, at TUE SUN Office NO. s i Strand, In the Precinct of the Savoy, n th e Ceunll Allllolcee7C,--Tbureclay, September 15, 1831.